With a large number of gas discharge lamps applied in medium-and-high grade car market in China, the requirements on headlight safety is more and more strict standard. Therefore, most of Chinese medium-and-high grade cars are equipped with headlight cleaning apparatus. Especially, a headlight such as a gas discharge lamp is easy to be contaminated during running process and causes glare for a driver counterpart, and further might causes accident. Therefore, to equip a cleaning apparatus on a headlight of a gas discharge lamp is necessary; meanwhile, China has already compulsorily executed provision that a high-brightness light source must be equipped with a headlight cleaning apparatus.
So far, lots of relevant technologies are disclosed, such as the Japanese patent with publication No. JP2003285723, which disclosed a headlight cleaning apparatus; said headlight cleaning apparatus is provided with a cleaning solution spray port capable of sliding relative to a fixed part of a vehicle. Said headlight cleaning apparatus comprises a retractable sprayer with a spraying port arranged on one end of a cleaning cylinder; a piston partly inserted in the opening part of the cleaning cylinder and slidably arranged in the cleaning cylinder; a fixed piston which is arranged outside of the cleaning cylinder and provided with a fixing part for being fixed on the fixing part of the vehicle; an augmenter arranged between the piston and the fixed piston for pressing the retractable sprayer to said fixed part; an inner cylinder sleeve fixed on one end of the cleaning cylinder and capable of being slideably inserted in the fixed piston for closing said opening; a connection vent which is arranged on the inner cylinder sleeve, connects the inside and outside of the cleaning cylinder, can be used for discharging solution between the piston and the inner cylinder sleeve in the cleaning cylinder and can exhaust air in the cleaning cylinder along with the telescopic sliding movement of said retractable sprayer. With the help of hydraulic pressure of cleaning solution between said spraying port in the cleaning cylinder and the piston, the retractable sprayer stretches relative to the fixed piston, and in the extension state, the cleaning solution is sprayed out from said spraying port.
To prevent the invasion of rainwater, impurities and so on from entering into said headlight cleaning apparatus, said cleaning cylinder is sealed by seal components inside and outside. However, due to the interior and exterior seals, air can't cross the space between the piston and the seals freely. Additionally, with the going in and out of air, flow resistance (pressure loss) is increased dramatically, which results in cleaning cylinder hard to move freely relative to other fixed parts (such as the fixed piston).
To deal with above problems, said Japanese patent provided a headlight cleaning apparatus which can not only prevent the invasion of rainwater, etc, but can make the cleaning cylinder move freely relative to other fixed part (such as the fixed piston).
From disclosed content of said Japanese patent, the cleaning apparatus is equipped with the retractable sprayer; the piston partially inserted into the opening part of the cleaning cylinder and slideably arranged in the cleaning cylinder; the fixed piston which is arranged outside (inside) the cleaning cylinder and provided with the fixing part fixed on the fixed part of the vehicle body; the augmenter arranged between said piston and the fixed piston and capable of pressing the retractable sprayer to one side of the fixed part; the inner cylinder sleeve which is slideably inserted into said fixed piston and fixed on one end of the cleaning cylinder for closing said opening; and the connection vent that can discharge air in the cleaning cylinder. The augmenters (springs) are mounted on the sprayer and the fixed piston respectively, and said sprayer can be slideably inserted into one end of said fixed piston. Because the aim of the invention of said headlight cleaning apparatus is to prevent the invasion of rainwater, etc, the invention of said headlight cleaning apparatus focused on binding and matching between constructional elements and the vehicle body. Therefore, it is obvious that the cleaning apparatus of the contrasting invention is more complex in structure and complicated in manufacturing.
Furthermore, the fixed piston part of the cleaning apparatus disclosed by said Japanese patent is in a fixed state. the fixed piston part and the nozzle part are equipped with a small augmenting component (spring) respectively, the spring forces of the two small springs are applied on the piston and the nozzle, but only the nozzle slides relative to the piston part, then the nozzle part is under relative high load, and the efficiency of said nozzle is influenced by long time using, affecting the cleaning efficiency of the whole cleaning apparatus.
Moreover, the size of former vehicle cleaning apparatus is 200-300 mm in length, mostly over 100 g in weight. Thus, former cleaning apparatus is of a big structure, accordingly, the plaque size is bigger and assembly requirement is higher.
Considering that, the aim of the invention is to provide a cleaning apparatus with higher cleaning efficiency, simpler structure, lighter weight and more reliable operation. The vehicle headlight cleaning apparatus of the invention adopts an integral (single) spring composite structure, which makes said cleaning apparatus not only have simple structure, but decrease the load of cleaning solution with respect to a piston part and a nozzle part. Thus, the headlight cleaning apparatus of the invention has high cleaning efficiency, reliable running and long service life. Moreover, the cleaning apparatus of the invention is in light and handy structure and requires small plaque size and lower assembly requirement. The headlight cleaning apparatus is especially suitable for cleaning a gas discharge lamp.